Grace Fellowship 01/10/10 God the Father, and His Wayward Children Isaiah 1:1-9
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Several weeks ago, I mentioned that we would begin a study in the book of Isaiah soon. Well, that future is now the present and I would encourage you not to worry about being stuck in the book of Isaiah forever and ever. Fret not. Do not fear. Even I do not want to die of old age preaching from this Old Testament prophet’s book. But, we’ll be here for a good long while, and the long while really will be good.
We’ve already had a bit of introduction to Isaiah as we looked at several passages related to the Incarnation. But there are a few more introductory thoughts I’d like to share with you before we look at the text.
In commenting on this book, one scholar said Isaiah “is arguably the most theologically significant book in the Old Testament.” That is quite a statement, and if he is correct, this should be a very profitable and challenging study for us. Another commentator said, “The New Testament quotes Isaiah more than all the other prophets together.” So the writers of the New Testament had a very high view of this particular book. More than that, they had a high opinion of Isaiah himself. Turn with me to John 12 for just a moment.
37 Though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him, 38 so that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:"Lord, who has believed what he heard from us, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?" 39 Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah said, 40 "He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they see with their eyes, and understand with their heart, and turn, and I would heal them." 41 Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him.
What is John saying here? Whose glory did the prophet Isaiah see way back in days of old? John is speaking here of the Lord Jesus. Isaiah saw the glory of Christ and spoke of him when he wrote during the 8th century prior to the New Testament. John is talking specifically of Isaiah chapter 6:
1 In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one called to another and said:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!”
4 And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. 5 And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”
John is saying Isaiah saw the Lord Jesus. It is Christ of whom the angels speak when they cry “Holy, holy, holy.“ The babe in the manger is the Lord of hosts whom Isaiah saw sitting upon the throne of Heaven. And it is in the presence of Christ that Isaiah feels the sense of his own sinfulness and condemnation. He has seen THE King, the same King the wise men sought, the King whom God said would sit upon David’s throne forever.
John goes on to quote Isaiah and to speak of the literal fulfillment of his prophecy regarding the Lord Jesus. You are all somewhat familiar with Isaiah’s call to be God’s prophet there in chapter 6:
8 And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here am I! Send me.” 9 And he said, “Go, and say to this people:
“‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’
10 Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes;
lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts,
and turn and be healed.”
This is the first thing the Lord gives Isaiah to say to the people of Judah. And it is a somber message indeed. God is in essence saying to the Jews, “Keep on playing with all your religious exercises. I am not going to allow you to understand what you are doing. I am going to prevent you from understanding the word of God.” It is a word of judgment and warning. But these words also have a literal fulfillment by means of the Lord Jesus in John’s day which he records for us in John 12:
37 Though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him, 38 so that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:"Lord, who has believed what he heard from us, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?" 39 Therefore they could not believe.
They did not believe, therefore they could not believe. Beloved, no one has a right to salvation. You may have never heard anyone say that before. But contrary to everything that many well-meaning Christians may say, no one anywhere has a right to forgiveness of sins and eternal life. What we have a right to is what we have earned. Because of our sinfulness and rebellion, we have earned Death and Hell. “For the wages [i.e. what we are owed] of sin is death.“ (Romans 6:23a). That is what all men have a right to because all men everywhere have earned it and deserve it. No one has a right to salvation.
However, everyone DOES have a right to hear the message of the gospel. Everyone deserves to hear the Gospel message because the Lord Jesus has commanded Christians to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to everyone (Matt. 18:16-20). It is that command, and the desire to be obedient to our Master, and our desire to see the nations come to Christ that compels us to take this message to the whole world: “But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23b). It is a gift granted, not a debt owed. God owes us death. But He grants us life when we hear the Gospel , repent of our sins, and believe in Christ.
We as the disciples of the Lord Jesus are to be about that task of taking the gospel to the ends of the earth, and people have the right to hear it, even if they don’t want to hear it. Even if they don’t believe it when they do hear it. But because we have an obligation to take it to them, because the Lord Jesus has commanded His people to proclaim it throughout the world, everyone has the right to hear it.
But notice how the Gospel message is typically received. Jesus Himself performed miracles “in person” to the people of Israel, but John tells us, “they did not believe in Him.” Their stubborn refusal to seriously consider the signs and miracles Jesus performed before their eyes had been prophesied by Isaiah. “Therefore they could not believe.” They refused to believe, and that stubborn unbelief resulted in the Lord Jesus actually preventing them from believing. That is, to a large degree, the message of the first half of the book of Isaiah, and it becomes the experience of Isaiah. God sends him to preach, but nobody listens. Therefore, God brings judgment upon the entire nation. That may be the reason why you and I have seldom heard very much preaching from this book. It goes against the grain of the sentimental theological beliefs about God and Christ and the Gospel message that we usually hear.
One thing has never changed: the Gospel has always been preached to an unbelieving world. The default setting of the human heart when it comes to God and salvation and Jesus Christ is unbelief. You may have seen that displayed in the news this past week when Brit Hume of Fox News had the audacity to say on national television that Christianity has something to offer that Buddhism does not. In other words, Christianity and Christ are superior to Buddha and Buddhism. Brit Hume is exactly right. There is no salvation in Buddhism. And the world, for the most part, hates Brit Hume for actually saying it. Proud fallen men are always offended by Jesus Christ and the Gospel.
So what has changed since the days of Isaiah? How has preaching the word of God and the reception of that word changed over the centuries? In no way at all. Like Isaiah, men are still called to proclaim the truth of God, to call people to repentance and faith. And just as it was in Isaiah’s day, and just as it was in Jesus’ day, today mankind universally hates God’s word and refuses to believe. But the most frightening part of this is what such rebellious unbelief can lead to. God retains the right to seal unbelieving people permanently in their unbelief. God can, and no doubt does refuse to enable rebellious people to believe the Gospel as an act of judgment for their blatant unbelief.
Today, by means of preaching, light from God continues to come into the world. Then what happens? Fallen men and women still love darkness rather than light. As it was in Isaiah’s day and in Jesus’ day, it remains God’s prerogative today to either dispel that spiritual darkness and grant mercy to a rebellious unbeliever, and actually cause him to believe what was previously foolishness to him, and give him or her the free gift of eternal life. Or God can withhold that saving grace and mercy and further harden people’s hearts so they not only do not believe, but they cannot believe the Gospel message.
In other words, what we’re saying is the same thing the Scriptures consistently say: “Salvation belongs to the Lord” (Jonah 2:9). Eternal life is God’s gift to grant if He sovereignly chooses to do so. And if you remember, those words were spoken by another Old Testament prophet from inside a fish in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea! What was Jonah saying when he said, “Salvation belongs to the Lord”? “Get me outta here! Only God can rescue me from this! And it is His decision whether or not to do so. Salvation is His gift to grant or to withhold!” I’m sure there is a fate worse than being digested alive by a fish at the bottom of the deep, blue sea, but it’s hard to imagine what that could be - other than Hell itself.
But notice the effect of God’s causing Jonah to be swallowed by a fish!
1 Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, 2 saying, . . . 7 “When my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple. 8 Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. 9 But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord!” (Jonah 2:1, 2, 7-9).
When God deals harshly with Jonah, his hard heart is broken and he is moved to prayer. God deals harshly with the unbelieving and hard-hearted to provoke them to humility, to repentance, and to faith. Thankfully, God does not deal with all men everywhere in keeping with their hardness of heart. Thankfully, He does not prevent all people everywhere from understanding the good news in His anger. He could. And no one could find fault with Him if He did. But, thankfully He doesn’t. Thankfully, He is a God of great mercy. Thankfully he still does not pay everyone the wages they deserve. Praise God He still grants the gift of eternal life to those who repent of their sin and believe the Gospel.
So the book of Isaiah is a book about Jesus Christ. In the gospel of Luke, we read of Jesus on the road to Emmaus with the two disciples, “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” (Luke 24:27). Jesus is to be found in the book of Isaiah, and in ALL the Old Testament. Now turn with me to Isaiah, chapter 1. I want to read just a few verses as our introduction to “the most theologically significant book in the Old Testament.”
1 The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.
2 Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the Lord has spoken:
This opening statement sets the stage for what is about to be said in the rest of Isaiah’s prophecy. Isaiah calls upon all of heaven and earth to come and hear what is about to be said. All of creation is called to pay attention because of who it is that will be speaking. Angels are to listen, and all the people of the earth are to stop and hear what will be said, because of who is saying it: Jehovah God, Jesus Christ, the God of Israel and the whole earth.
We need to ask ourselves the question, “When God speaks, do we actually listen?” When the word of God is spoken, are we really paying attention? When God speaks, all of creation is responsible for hearing it! What does it say of us if we as God’s own people come to church, presumably to hear God speak, but we listen only half-heartedly or not at all? How is it that God can speak to us from His word, and we NOT listen?
But that is often the case. Whether it is because of things that distract us, or because of a general lack of interest, our presence here every week is no proof that we are actually paying attention to what God is saying. The evidence of that lack of attention is seen in how what is preached doesn’t affect the way we live. That, as we are about to see, is exactly what happened to Judah. Lack of attention on the part of the people of God to the word of God produced such a deteriorated spiritual condition that is hard to describe or imagine. But here is how God describes the hearts and minds of His dull people:
2b “Children have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me.
3 The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master's crib,
but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.”
When God compares His own children to an ox or a donkey, to put it mildly, things are bad. Animals with nothing more than instinct are said to have more sense that those children who rebel against their own Heavenly Father. For God to declare that His own people don’t have the sense of a jackass is a blistering indictment. He raised them as children, He taught them His word, He delivered them from bondage, He gave them His Law, He worked signs and wonders for them for centuries, He protected them and delivered them repeatedly from their enemies. In a sense, they were the most spiritually spoiled children on the earth. But even in the midst of such obvious supernatural care by their own Father in Heaven, they have come to the point where they don’t have the mental or spiritual comprehension of an ox. Things are not good in Judah. And Isaiah isn’t the only one saying this:
Even the stork in the heavens knows her times, and the turtledove, swallow, and crane keep the time of their coming, but my people know not the rules of the Lord. (Jeremiah 8:7)
Even birds know to fly south for the winter. But God’s people don’t know the rules of God.
It is an immeasurable mercy that God continues to speak of them as “My people”. They do not know, they do not understand, they don’t know God’s commands. They don’t understand the concept of sin. How is that possible? How is it that these people could be this dull as to be spoken of in terms that make them lower than oxen or donkeys or storks? They have even lost what we speak of as common sense. They have no grasp of the obvious, they are irrational, illogical, and mindless. The evidence of this is seen in the fact that they live in rebellion against God.
In other words, God’s people suffer from spiritual insanity. That is the charge God brings against Judah. And we do not mean “insanity” in the sense in which it is used today. If someone is declared to be temporarily insane today, that absolves them from any responsibility for their actions, regardless of how heinous the crime.
Not here. God’s charge against Judah is that they have willingly, knowingly, and with malicious intent, chosen to turn away from the worship of the God who has been perfectly faithful to keep all of His promises to them for generations. They have turned away from the worship of God in order to worship false gods. They have chosen to commit spiritual adultery and to give the love they owe to Jehovah, to lifeless, demonically-inspired idolatry. That is insane. Even animals have more sense than that. The worship of lifeless idols is mindless.
4 Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly!
They have forsaken the Lord, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are utterly estranged.
Here God calls them “offspring of evildoers”. They were His own children. But this generation is not His. He has not created these people. They have gone from being God’s children, to being a generation of wickedness.
How does this happen? You know how it happens: by degrees. An entire nation doesn’t wake up one morning and decide they all despise God and forsake worshipping Him. It happens over time. It happens by means of compromise with those who are God’s enemies. It happens because the heart is not recognized as being inherently evil. It happens because of neglect of the soul. It happens because of neglect to train one’s children in the ways of the Lord. It happens because of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. It happens because people are led astray by the Devil. It happens because men are depraved from the tops of their heads to the bottoms of their feet. It all happens by degrees: here a little, there a little, until the proverbial frog finds himself in boiling water and it is too late.
Judah has gradually become a nation filled with sin. It’s people are laden with sin. That’s not just a little bit of sin, but a tremendous burden of sin. They are weighed down by it, crushed beneath the weight of it, and they just keep piling on the pounds upon themselves. Laden, burdened, overloaded, filled beyond capacity with their own iniquity.
Sounds like another nation I know of.
Verse 4 tells us the people of Judah forsook and despised the Lord and made themselves utterly estranged from Him. They absented themselves from God. They hated and abandoned God. The King James Version says, “They are gone away backward.” That seems to explain it a bit better. Their faces might physically be toward the Lord, but all the while they have moved away from Him. They give the appearance of being for God, but they have actually made themselves far away from Him.
Now you may be thinking, “How is it that we can be secure in our salvation, and still abandon the LORD? Can we lose our salvation? Can we become like God’s children here in Isaiah? Could we lose all sensibility of who God is and become totally estranged from the One we once loved and served?”
God is speaking to them as a nation (v4). As a people, they have turned away from God. That is the situation here in our own country. There was a time when, generally speaking, America was a predominately Christian nation of people who were at least nominally biblical in their convictions and their understanding of God. The Ten Commandments were understood to still be in force, and the Bible was generally regarded as the word of God. There was a fairly high percentage of Americans attending church regularly in the first 200 years of our history. Towns in the northeast were actually built around the church building in the center of the village, and all of life centered upon one’s church life.
That is not the case today. Are there real Christians within America? Well, yeah. I certainly hope so. I’m one! Are you? But would anyone looking at America as a whole, by looking at network television and by watching our music videos and listening to our radio broadcasts . . . Would anyone EVER come to the conclusion that America as a whole is following in the footsteps of the Lord Jesus? Not a chance! How did this happen? How did our nation fall so far from grace? By degrees. Slowly. One person at a time. One family at a time. One church at a time. One denomination at a time. One neighborhood at a time. One city, then one state, then one nation.
Notice again how God describes the condition of this nation of Judah:
5 Why will you still be struck down? Why will you continue to rebel?
The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.
6 From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no soundness in it,
but bruises and sores and raw wounds;
they are not pressed out or bound up or softened with oil.
Judah, you are spiritually sick from head to toe. You are not broken and in need of repair. You are not ill and in need of medication. You are totally disgusting, and need to be disposed of. And you don’t care. You are beaten and bruised, and your sores and wounds go untreated. You don’t even tend to your wounds. How long will you continue to bring this destruction upon yourselves? How long will you continue in your rebellion? Until you are beaten to death?
One of our favorite hymns is “How Sweet and Awful is the Place” by Isaac Watts. The third stanza says, "Why was I made to hear thy voice and enter while there's room, When thousands make a wretched choice And rather starve than come?" As it was in the days of Isaiah, it is today in our nation. We live in the midst of a people who love sin and rebellion so much that they would rather starve to death in sin, than repent and come to Christ.
But notice what Watts says here: “Why was I made to hear thy voice and enter while there's room?” Why are you a believer in the Lord Jesus while the majority of America couldn’t care less? Because there is always a remnant of God’s grace that is made to hear His voice and come to Him! Look at Isaiah 1:9 -
9 If the Lord of hosts had not left us a few survivors, we should have been like Sodom, and become like Gomorrah.
Q: What are Sodom and Gomorrah like?
A: Extinct. But even in the case of Sodom and Gomorrah, God sent angels to DRAG Lot and his family out in order to save their lives and not allow the righteous to die with the wicked. Why does anyone survive this world that is filled with nations that are laden with iniquity, that despise the Holy One of Israel and are totally estranged from Him?
Q: How is it that the entire world does not suffer the same fate as Sodom and Gomorrah?
A: It will. But even in that, God will have His survivors, those who are made to hear His voice and escape destruction.
Salvation is completely the result of the work of a gracious God towards a world full of rebels. The people of Judah in Isaiah’s day are no different than the people anywhere else at any point in time. Left to ourselves, none seek after God. None are righteous. All are spiritually sick from the tops of their heads to the soles of their feet, incurably, terminally ill. What hope is there?
There is NO hope apart from the mercy and grace of God. So why were you rescued? Why were you made to hear His voice and enter His presence before it was too late? Only because of the mercy and grace of a good and kind God. Worship Him.